I was talking to an old friend about our annual trip to the local traveling fairground when we were kids, and he asked me if I remember The Zipper ride. Boy did that bring back memories. Did anyone ride this thing? I think it's one of the longest running rides, probably been in circulation since the 50's, yet despite all of today's hi-tech amusement park technology none of it seems as scary or physically insane as The Zipper. The thing was like some kind of medieval tool of torture, and we loved it. 
 
It certainly looked scary enough when you looked at it running. It had a bizarre, almost sinister look about it that made you wonder what in the hell the riders were experiencing. The thing about The Zipper was that it had 3 simultaneous paths of movement - the whole thing rotated itself, the cabs would rotate around the thing on a track, and the cabs themselves would spin on their own pivots. Three equations working against each other, and the net result was that it would fling you around in the strangest of ways so that you didn't know whether you were coming or going. Are we on our way up or down? Hard to tell. What direction are we spinning? The physics of the thing meant that one minute you were having an almost mellow time of it, and then the equations would conspire to fling you head over heels in the most violent manner whilst simultaneously dive bombing upside down toward the ground. It was like some macabre demonstration that the laws of physics don't give a damn how uncomfortable you are, they just do their thing regardless. You felt like you were going to die horribly at any minute. I remember all the loudest screaming coming from that thing. Ha - maybe I'll hunt one out and take a ride on it for old time's sake. I wonder if there's one at Coney Island? 
 

 
 

I remember riding The Zipper in my childhood.  It scared the pants right off of me -- not just because of the all of the jumbly movement and the heights that it reached, but rather because I could clearly see that some bolts had been replaced with chewed bubble gum and that the guy who ran it looked suspiciously like a wanted poster I'd seen earlier that day.
 
All kidding aside, though, those old fairground rides from a few decades ago really gave you a dose of it-might-fall-apart-any-second adrenaline.  A friend of mine palled around with an operator one day and found out that he often spent time avoiding and subsequently collecting falling wallets, keys, pocket knives, and other such stuff.
 
Fun times.

 

Turn the sound off - very distracting conversation.

sharke
I was talking to an old friend about our annual trip to the local traveling fairground when we were kids, and he asked me if I remember The Zipper ride.

You didn't spend your whole childhood at Spanish City?

Karyn

sharke
I was talking to an old friend about our annual trip to the local traveling fairground when we were kids, and he asked me if I remember The Zipper ride.

You didn't spend your whole childhood at Spanish City?

The Spanish City was pretty awful, except it did have a decent roller coaster at one point. The thing was built by a local tycoon called Claude Cooper, and in 1984 I was Junior Reporter for the day on Metro Radio and had to interview him. We had a great time and the local radio celeb Paddy MacDee tricked my mother into getting onto the roller coaster with him, I still remember her effing and blinding as we climbed that first hill to the top of the dip. Mr. Cooper gave me 20 free tickets for The Corkscrew as it was called, and I used them all in a couple of weeks. 
 
The real fairground fun in Newcastle was the Town Moor "Hoppings," the biggest fairground in Europe which comes once a year. Absolutely every ride you could imagine, including two Zippers. 

Guitarjanitor
I remember riding The Zipper in my childhood.  It scared the pants right off of me -- not just because of the all of the jumbly movement and the heights that it reached, but rather because I could clearly see that some bolts had been replaced with chewed bubble gum and that the guy who ran it looked suspiciously like a wanted poster I'd seen earlier that day.
 
All kidding aside, though, those old fairground rides from a few decades ago really gave you a dose of it-might-fall-apart-any-second adrenaline.  A friend of mine palled around with an operator one day and found out that he often spent time avoiding and subsequently collecting falling wallets, keys, pocket knives, and other such stuff.
 
Fun times.

I remember another ride which we called "The Eggs," which was basically a circular Zipper with egg shaped cabs and didn't have nearly as much crazy movement. It was damn fast though. One time a friend and I got in and found the cab was full of broken glass, someone had smashed a couple of beer bottles in there. We had to close our eyes the whole ride because this egg thing was spinning like crazy and showering us with glass. Not a good experience. 
 
If I recall the safety "harness" for the Zipper was just a padded bar that was attached to the door and locked across your stomach area when the door closed. And the door seemed to be held shut with a couple of flimsy looking pins. I'm pretty sure there were a few cases of people falling out back in the day. And it used to run a lot faster than it does now - they had to slow the speed down because too many people were getting whiplash and throwing up. 

Here's another video which isn't as good quality but does give a good head-on view of how horrible the motion is. 
 

 

Midway hawkers calling try your luck with me.

Shining stars on summer nights.